The merger would create a behemoth, reports the NY Times, controlling 30 percent of the nation’s cable subscribers and more than 40 percent of broadband service, nationwide. Opponents of the deal say joining the two largest providers of cable television and broadband service would create a company with inordinate market power.

The CableWiFi alliance was announced at last year’s Cable Show in Boston. It includes hotspots from Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications and Bright House Networks. Collectively the MSOs in the partnership have laid claim to having the largest Wi-Fi network in the nation.

It makes their homes rough equivalents of coffee shops and other public venues that have long offered free Wi-Fi. Comcast didn’t say whether it is considering a hybrid mobile service or selling Wi-Fi to carriers.

Whether Comcast’s WiFi network would be truly “free” (to non-cable subscribers) is an open question. It creates a new revenue stream for Comcast but could kill competition before its starts.

Skeptics are fearful Comcast and Time Warner Cable will simply “take out” actually free WiFi spectrum. Some people (like me), fear that by blanketing whole communities with powerful WiFi on the lower 5 GHz band, Comcast and Time Warner could largely eliminate any WiFi competition from GoWex, Facebook/Cisco, Google, the phone companies or independent providers. Comcast could charge for the air.

Cisco and Facebook announced a similar partnership that allows Wi-Fi users to log into access points, using Facebook credentials, sharing their demographic data in the process. Facebook Wi-Fi isn’t sharing the customer’s name with the network owner; instead it’s supplying the business demographic and social data drawn from the customer’s profile.